The USS George Washington is the U.S. Navy's only forward-deployed aircraft carrier. She is now operating in the Indo-Pacific (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images).
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A week after the United States Navy’s largest supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78), finally returned to Naval Station Norfolk, Va., ending a record-long deployment, another aircraft carrier may have begun her 2026 Indo-Pacific patrol. Halfway around the world from Norfolk, the sixth Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS George Washington (CVN-73) departed from her homeport of Yokosuka, Japan.
Ship spotters on social media shared images of the warship in Tokyo Bay on Saturday afternoon local time. According to Stars and Stripes, the Nimitz-class flattop headed out to sea with little fanfare, although families of the crew gathered along the base’s shoreline to “wave goodbye to their loved ones.”
The ship has been preparing for its next deployment for several weeks.
CVN-73 was underway earlier this month, following a post-deployment maintenance period. Carrier Air Wing 5 (CVW-5), which is typically embarked on CVN-73, began 10 days of field carrier landing practice drills on Iwo Jima earlier this month, with the training concluded on May 17.
USS George Washington is the U.S. Navy’s only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, a role she resumed in late 2024. The warship completed her first Indo-Pacific patrol following her mid-life refueling last December.
Forward-deployed U.S. Navy forces include ships, aircraft, and personnel permanently stationed at foreign overseas bases. The strategy is meant to enable a faster response to regional threats while fostering a strong partnership with allies.
After the Second World War, the United States Navy established a presence at Yokosuka, which maintained ships of the U.S. Fleet in the Pacific. The importance of the base at Yokosuka became evident during the Korean War in 1950, and even after Japan’s formal occupation ended, the facility has remained an essential overseas base.
As the United States is actively engaged in intense great power competition in the Pacific, primarily against the People's Republic of China, aircraft carriers have been a central component. The warships remain a premier symbol of American maritime power projection.
That is noteworthy as last year, four different nuclear-powered carriers, the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70), the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) and the USS George Washington, all operated at one point in the U.S. 7th Fleet’s area of responsibility in 2025.
However, since January, when CVN-72 was dispatched to the Arabian Sea, the U.S. Navy has maintained no aircraft carrier presence in the western Pacific.
Apart from USS George Washington, none of the carriers deployed in the Indo-Pacific last year is likely to see another lengthy mission to the region this year.
USS Nimitz, the U.S. Navy’s oldest active duty supercarrier, completed her final overseas deployment last December and is now in the Caribbean as she makes a homeport shift from Naval Base Kitsap, Bremerton, Wash., to Naval Station Norfolk. CVN-68 has been on a goodwill and farewell tour, making port calls throughout Latin America. She is expected at Naval Station Norfolk in the coming weeks, and is scheduled to be decommissioned in March 2027.
CVN-70 returned to San Diego, California, in August 2025, following a nine-month-long deployment in the U.S. 3rd, 5th and 7th Fleet operating areas in the eastern Pacific Ocean, the Middle East, and the western Pacific and Indian Oceans. At the earliest, another deployment by the USS Carl Vinson won’t begin until this fall.
The USS Abraham Lincoln continues to operate in the Arabian Sea, where she had supported Operation Epic Fury, the aerial campaign launched against Iran on February 28, 2026. CVN-72 departed San Diego on November 21, 2025, and, as of Saturday, has been deployed for 183 days. It is expected that the carrier may remain in the Middle East until there is some final resolution with Tehran over its nuclear program, or until another carrier could relieve her.
The USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77), the U.S. Navy’s newest Nimitz-class carrier, is also in the Arabian Sea, having circled Africa to reach the region.
For a few weeks this spring, the U.S. Navy briefly had three carriers operating in the Middle East for the first time since the 2003 Iraq War. Soon after the arrival of CVN-77, the USS Gerald R. Ford finally ended her nearly 11-month-long deployment.
Two other U.S. Navy carriers are expected to deploy this year, but only the West Coast-based USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) would likely operate in the Indo-Pacific, though she could also relieve CVN-72 in the Middle East.
The other soon-to-be-available supercarrier is the Norfolk-based USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69), which has been conducting pre-deployment drills in the Atlantic.
The three remaining carriers in the U.S. Navy’s fleet include the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), which is now completing her mid-life refueling and complex overhaul at Norfolk, and won’t likely begin sea trials until later in 2026 or early 2027; the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75), now preparing for her mid-life refueling, which will sideline the carrier through the end of the decade; and the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76), now undergoing an extended maintenance period that began in March 2025 at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.
Given that the U.S. continues to maintain a presence in the Middle East and may seek to mass forces in the Caribbean as Washington applies pressure on Cuba, there may be a diminished presence of U.S. Navy aircraft carriers in the Indo-Pacific in 2026.
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